


Lessons

by Tyellas



Category: The Shape of Water (2017)
Genre: Bathtub Sex, Come play, Explicit Sexual Content, F/M, Masturbation, Mid-Movie Spoilers, Mild Angst, Oral Sex, Romance, Slime, Tenderness, Teratophilia, Vaginal Sex, lubricated for her pleasure, water mating adaptations
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-12-22
Updated: 2017-12-22
Packaged: 2019-02-18 09:08:08
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,882
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13096896
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Tyellas/pseuds/Tyellas
Summary: Elisa teaches to, and learns from, her rescued friend. There’s alotto learn.





	Lessons

Elisa’s hands shake as she unlocks her door. Such a day. She’d been rattled ever since that dire interview with Strickland. Pure rage had possessed her, leaving her in shock at herself afterwards. Zelda had let her have it, too. But they are still on speaking terms. She and Zelda aren’t fired. Strickland doesn’t know where _he_ is. They are all safe for another day. And maybe, perhaps, if she’s very lucky, _he_ will want to touch her again, like last night. She feels color rising in her face and opens up.

Giles is sliding a chair back beside her kitchen table. Elisa sails over and taps a charcoal smudge on his nose. Giles’ laugh turns into a yawn. He says, “Our boy’s had three herring and a half dozen eggs. Slept most of the night. Poor creature,  tuckered out after everything. Any fuss yet at work?” He raises an eyebrow.

Elisa signs, _Asked us all.  Me, not much. I’m a dummy, remember._ She leaves it at that.

Giles chuckles. “More fool, them. Time for me to get some shut-eye. You rest, too. I'm sure you’ve earned it.” They stand there for a moment, sharing the same conspirator’s smile. Elisa sees his thumb rubbing the charcoal pencil he holds: despite his yawns, he still wants to draw. Sure enough, he reels away, tapping the charcoal against his sketchpad, the absent-minded artist tonight.

Elisa smiles him out. Then, she closes, locks, and bolts her door. Carefully, she puts a container with more algae for the creature’s water on the table. She takes off her red heels, her favorite pair, and tucks them carefully into the shoe rack. In her stocking feet, she tiptoes through to her bathroom. She doesn’t want to wake him. She wants to see him so badly.

In her bathroom, the fall morning light is vague and silvery. Her tub is full to the brim. Like a marvelous dream, a marine god in a glass sarcophagus, _he_ lies curled up inside: the amphibian man. His reflecting scales give the tub’s water a bluish tinge.

Elisa drinks in the sight of him. He’s all right. Home, with everyone safe, her heart should be slowing down. But it’s beating faster than ever, not only because of last night. Because her flood of rage at Strickland hammered home what _he_ means to her.

There’s a flash of brassy eyes in the tub. Before she can register it, he surges up, suddenly, fish-skin flaring gold at her. _E-L-I-S-A!_ he signs.

Elisa can’t laugh, but she smiles so wide she feels it, reaches out to him in greeting. As he rises, her hand glides over his arm, scales and fins and his hand.

He unfolds his dark-and-teal body to his full height. Boosted by the tub's base, he’s seven feet tall, shoulders blocking half the light from the bathroom window. A night of rest and protein has his muscles rippling, flesh and water making saturated sounds. His claws flick sharp for a moment, as if he beckons, and his ivory teeth flash. Looming, with a deep half-growl, he reaches for her, too. But his webbed hands flinch back at the wool of Elisa’s green coat. He must not like the texture. She peels the coat away, flings it to the floor outside. _Yes_ , he signs.

Elisa, too, signs _Yes_. Reeling with joy, she whips off her silk headband and tosses it towards her coat, then leans into his touch. With him in the tub, her face only comes to the middle of his chest. Pressing her cheek against his armor-like scales, she slides. He’s slimy. Dr. Hoffstetler said that was good, that slimy scales meant he was doing well. She tears herself away from his cool, tempting body to get rid of her shirtdress and slip.

For all that Elisa’s skinny, she still wears a girdle. If she shows up in the Occam locker room without one, Zelda is scandalized. But the creature utters a ping of distress at the sight of it. Elisa wriggles free of the girdle as quickly as she can, throwing her nylons after it. He repeats the noise and reaches for her again, this time to stroke the angry red marks the full-body girdle pressed into her ribs. He does this with his finger-tips, oddly blunt with the claws close to sheathed. The web binding his digits brushes her, too, and makes her breathless.

 _Ok_ , Elisa signs. _I am ok_. And she leans in, offering herself.

He takes. He seals those large, webbed hands around her waist. Each one cups half her narrow ribcage. It’s so gentle, but she throws her head back at the refreshing shock of it.

There is a pause. He stands still in the tub, his land-breaths sloshing in him. Elisa thinks he’s feeling her lungs, her breathing, which is getting faster. In the alluring planes of his face, his inhuman eyes are dilated almost black. Inspired, she signs: _my breasts._ Then she touches herself, taps them lightly. They aren’t much, but they’re what she’s got. _My breasts_ , she repeats.  

He makes a deep noise, acknowledging. His phosphorescence flickers anew, outlining his muscle-thick, webbed forearms. He slides his hands up to just below her breasts. As if, perhaps, they were too precious to touch.

Elisa makes another sign, suddenly blushing to do it: _my nipples._

Bathed in his unbroken gaze, she pinches one. He blinks with his translucent second eyelids, and the slime on his hands drips thicker where he clasps her. He loosens one hand to run a blunt thumb-tip across her left nipple. One of his surprised sounds follows as she arches closer, her nipple coming alive. Softly, so softly, he explores her there, until that flesh is a stiff, electric nub.  Elisa reaches up to caress her other nipple, tight and aching with helpless arousal. He leans in and watches, fascinated.

Suddenly, he turns his head, and lifts her two feet off the ground. It’s all so he can press one of his ears to her chest. He makes a clicking, rhythmic noise. She strokes the ridged top of his head briefly before she tries to show, with wriggles and little kicks, that he can put her down.

When he does, Elisa signs what he was listening to: _my heart_. She picks the simplest way of saying it, a middle finger pointing to her chest twice. She turns the gesture to him, reaching up to the center of his chest. _Your heart_. He repeats the clicks: they have the two-step rhythm of a heartbeat. Seeming pleased, he runs the thumb he prefers down the center of her chest, to pause at a point that perplexes him.  He kneels in the tub, splashing Elisa’s thighs.

 _My navel_ , she signs. If he explores there, with the soft way he touches, she’ll seize up with soundless giggles. Elisa traces her own hand up herself quickly. She does not name her throat, or the scars along it. Instead, she touches her lips. _My mouth._

He doesn’t take the cue. He is still distracted by the lower half of her body. To keep him from tickling her, Elisa, already unsteady, slides down her soaked, clinging panties. His luminance flashes. In her head, she hears Zelda: _Lord! Trust a man!_ His webbed hands cover her again, skimming her hip bones, cupping her bottom. She wriggles against his touch, happily this time. After what her squirming meant before, he releases her.

Daringly, she leans foreward and touches the curve of his lower lip. Hopeful of a kiss, sliding her damp upper thighs against each other, she kneels, herself. She signs, _your mouth,_ and rests her finger there, near the teeth that sheared Strickland’s digits off.He presses his firm lips around her finger in a sucking nip, then stands.

She starts to sign again, _your –_

Elisa stops. Swallows. Stares. Because, as quickly as it happened last night, he is ready to do more than kiss.

Most of the time, his crotch is an extension of his abdomen’s scaled, muscled ripples, with the slightest virile pouch. Two of those ripples have parted lengthwise, becoming finny edges releasing his shaft. It's snaking up his belly, thickest at the base, the same cool olive hue as his lips. It’s shaped with inhuman curves, swaying out, dipping back in. The tip is streamlined, a pointed arrowhead. Elisa knows that when she touches it, it will be satin-smooth.

But for all that Elisa had felt his cock yesterday morning, she had been so deeply moved, on the edge of being overwhelmed, that she hadn’t looked beyond glimpses. Now, she studies. She wraps her shaking hand around a penis as monstrous and beautiful as he is. Her fingertips do not meet around the width of the base. At her touch, the shaft pulses, thickens, lengthens, all at once. More, a half-inch slit on the tip’s underside spreads. As she grips, a generous spill of clear, silky fluid laces over her hand. That must have helped her mount him with such blissful ease last night, even in a tub of salt water. It takes most of both her small, bony hands to match his shaft's length. Elisa exhales, a silent sigh of wonder. He replies with one of his smaller noises, arcing towards her.

She levers up, off her knees, and kisses the tip.

He utters a yawp, thighs stiffening. Elisa barely notices. The fluid on her lips is sweet and brine and savorable and it _tingles_.  There’s some chemical spark in it. Her ever-silent mouth opens, tastes again, disbelieving, craving. After a hungry moment, the tingle builds on her tongue, almost tipping into irritation but never quite, always on the sparkling, aching edge.

One of his webbed hands slowly wraps her head as she licks, and it’s a cage of light, his phosphorescence gilding the tiles and water. She closes her eyes and gently, slowly, the way his touch cherished her, takes his ready shaft into her mouth.

He can only stand one flutter of her throat and tongue. He bends half-double with a deep-sea cry. Elisa releases him. Standing to console him sweeps her right into his grip. Both hands on her ribs again, he swings her into the water, with him, like she weighs nothing. Off-balance, she rocks off her feet, sitting hard on the back edge of the tub as more water splashes. He sinks into the tub before her, on his knees, sliding his hands down her. Now they are at the same level, eye to eye.

Realising she’s in front of him with her legs spread, she signs, right above her crotch: _my cunt._ Her hands make an open diamond. It’s a beautiful sign, she thinks, far better than any spoken word for this. He utters a marine keen, blue light racing under his skin. His hands have never left her and they draw her in, and her hands reach out, and she takes him inside her.

It’s perfection. The wet tip of his shaft both splits her and spreads that tingling thrill inside her. She could not be more filled. He pulls her closer, webbed hands plastered across her back. Elisa both hears and feels his inhuman groan of satisfaction.

There’s a gurgling sound that doesn’t come from him. With a start, Elisa looks around. He must have knocked the bath's drain open. The tub is emptying out. Her weak, wavering try to reach it flattens her against him, drives his cock deeper into her, and he pulls her down beneath him, laying her in the receding water. Her back only rests on the tub for an instant before he scoops her up, pressing her against his chest. Where they touch, his slime clings, another connection. Her thighs lock around his hips and all his lights go dark, save a few threads of electric blue.

All his fluid instincts take him as he thrusts. He’s made to mate like he’s made to swim. He courses into her evenly, one arm wrapped about her, cupping her tight to him. The living weight of him drives his cock deep. It’s every luxury, satin and thickness and wild sparkle in his unbroken embrace. Elisa shudders, blue and gold phosphenes playing behind her closed eyes, coming. He fills her yet, rhythm untouched, still strong and amazing. She arcs in a second bright release, bucking her heat against his cool muscles.

With a deep benthic moan, he goes superbly tense, pressing her tighter than ever. Elisa’s eyes fly wide. She can feel him coming, far harder than last night. The thick shaft filling her twitches with its own life. Clamped to him, she spreads, does her utmost to receive.

His hand unseals from Elisa’s back, and he lays her down softly, then kneels up. Shattered, bereft for a moment, she pulls herself to sitting. At first she’s limp. Then, an unexpected new sensation makes her sit bolt upright. Startled, she looks down. His come is brilliant, pearly white. It’s like a cup of new milk has spilled between her legs. Elisa reaches down and strokes the intense flood of milt, breathless. Her fingertips confirm: this, too, has something extra about it. His come has an uncanny, enduring warmth against her flesh, inside her crevices. It’s more a glow than the itchy sparkle earlier. She can’t help but touch herself. Once she feels how good it is, she knows she’s not done.

Elisa manages to sign, _Wait. Please._ _It’s good._ Has she taught him these? She forgets, she can’t think, but he lights up again. She lies against the back of the tub and sends her fingers flying, rubbing against herself. She’s never been more drenched, overflowing with the wetness she’s craved since the first time she touched herself. She spreads so he can see how she likes it, pressing the back of her thighs against him as he kneels closer.

He watches, a dark and patient idol, lit again by pulsing threads of light, gold this time. Her eyes meeting his, she licks her fingers to taste both of them together, filling her mouth with that curious warmth, and dives down again. As she lifts her lower body against him, he cups her hip and half her behind in one hand. The feel of his grasping webs sends her into a final, blinded orgasm, so bone-shaking that an actual sound breaks from her warmed throat.

The tub goes cold behind her back. Elisa flashes back to Strickland’s sugar-rotted breath, his corrupt drawl. _Bet I can make you squawk_ , he’d leered. For an instant, rage and shame tear her. But a long, musical trill echoes off the tiles.

Elisa opens her eyes. The creature is still kneeling, watching, arced over her, broad-shouldered and protective. He has the same air of bemused wonder as when he touched her throat last night. He skims a hand over her, touching all the parts she’d named, as adoringly if she’s a blend of Marilyn Monroe and Dorothy Daindrige, the loveliest woman in the world. When she looks back at him, his phosphorescence kicks up. His presence turns her bathroom into a strange paradise.

He reaches down and touches her chest twice with the center digits of his hands.

_Your heart._

Her lips part in delight. Then he makes a wrong-sounding noise, a hitching rasp in his breath.

Elisa staggers up, fast, to do what he needs. Bringing him any more pain, after he’d survived Strickland’s tortures, is unbearable. She rinses out the tub. Refills it with water and more, tops it up with the new algae, urges him in. He submerges at once, the threads of light in his skin turning the tub into a shining wizard’s brew. His gills simmer with fine bubbles, expelling air. Seeing that he can breathe again, Elisa can, too. His gold-coin eyes follow her fondly, then one of them winks. Giles must have taught him that. She signs, _back soon_ , and goes to get some rags.

Elisa mops up for the umpteenth time. Despite the tub emptying out, after all their splashing, there is a solid half-inch of water on the floor. She wonders if it could stay wet enough in here that he could have the water he needed while they made love. It's an interesting thought.

By the time she’s done, his phosphorescence has dimmed, his eyes have closed, leaving a gray morning. Giles has said she can go to his place to shower. It’s very good of him, but she’s not going over there like _this_. Slowly, reluctantly, she cleans herself at the sink. She’s exhausted, and she aches every possible way: her tailbone, between her legs, the vast emotions pounding in her chest, like the waves that beat the sides of the canal.

Everything she ever dreamed of, or feared, has come to her.

It’s all so much.

Elisa sighs. The only thing to do, for now, is to curl up right next to the tub again. Resting her chin on her arm, Elisa gazes at him. Algae swirls around him like dark petals. He’s sunk quickly into his own sleep. She lets her own eyes close, touched by a final glow at the one sign he’d chosen. The one that made everything worthwhile.

Her heart, her heart, her heart…


End file.
